“Don’t cry,” Aunt Tuba consoled Pesia, hugging and kissing her.
     The conversation regarding bodies reminded me of the only dead person I had ever seen. The previous winter Grandpa Zeilig had died after a short bout with stomach problems. The family thought his fear of not being able to pay the Soviet government’s high taxes, which they imposed on all so called “capitalists” (in reality, small businesses), had caused his death. He’d owned a small restaurant-tavern and the house he lived in, ours, the one Aunt Tuba and my friend Hersh lived in, and Uncle Shulim’s.  After his body had been washed and rinsed with a bucket of water by the Hevra kaddisha, undertakers, he’d been placed on the floor with lighted candles following Jewish tradition, as a man watched over him during the night, because the dead must not be abandoned.
     I was heartbroken and confused about Grandpa’s death, having spent a great deal of time with him every day. I found it hard to believe that he was gone forever. How was it, I wondered, that his soul had left his body? I knew the dead couldn’t move, yet I expected him to, and I thought it cruel to put him in the ground. Listening to the talk of dead people, dread coursed through me.
     My thoughts then turned to the earliest recollections of Grandpa, when I was five. It was a hot and humid summer afternoon. A cloudburst interrupted my playing in the backyard. The initial heavy raindrops hit and raised the dust off the ground. Instantly the air smelled of dust. Soon it would turn into thick mud, the kind our town Beltz was known for. To get out of the rain I ran through my grandparent’s kitchen door and into their house. I then proceeded through the dining room and into the room fronting the street which was my Grandpa Zeilig’s restaurant. There I joined him at the open front door watching the
heavy rain.
     “Grandpa, look at all the utachki (little ducks in Russian),” [...]